Misery Loves Company: Two Guys Watch Baseball

Games 95-97 - Mets

Braves 11, Mets 4
Braves 7, Mets 4
Braves 11, Mets 8
Record: 40-57

That I downplayed the importance of beating the Braves this year as compared to years past does not mean that I enjoy or can even tolerate the repeated bludgeoning at the hands of those bastards. That they are a veteran team of sluggers having career years and the Mets are a young team of call-ups does not excuse dropping seven in a row to them. That I have eased my obnoxious epithets towards "America's Team," its legions of "fans," and anything to do with the franchise does not mean that witnessing their domination of the Mets is anything less than a boot in the groin. I didn't think I needed to spell this out, but perhaps.

New York took an 8-3 lead into the 8th yesterday afternoon, and it looked like they might salvage a single game in the four-game set. I felt I was going above and beyond the call of duty in the dog days of Met-fandom by having the game on two separate televisions as I worked around the house. Any excuse to slide into the family room or basement and tidy something up would be followed up with a half-inning or so of viewing. I failed to realize that if I abandoned this practice for an inning and half at the end of what should have been an easy wrap-up, the wheels would fly from the cart and the Metwagon would tumble about wildly. Young reliever (you know, the kind I said I wanted to see more of) Edwin Almonte and Mike Stanton retired one batter in the 8th, despite facing ten of them. On the 34th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Javy Lopez greeted Stanton with a commemorative moonshot to pull within one run, and then it just got ugly. Errors by Stanton and Rey "At .207, Errors Really Aren't Helping My Cause" Sanchez and a slew of singles helped total eight runs for the Braves. Enter John Smoltz, exit Mets.

To their credit, the New York media (that I have seen) has not started in with the bitter, foolish, gag-reflex talk of how the Yankees dumped Stanton and he's blowing games for the Mets while Benitez has pitched pretty well in his two outings thus far for the Yanks. Either they're wiser than that, knowing Stanton is better than that and Benitez is worse, or they're not clever enough to have pointed it out. Either way, yesterday's new type of disastrous lead-blowing is better than the same old Armando Benitez way. It's still a kick in the groin, but at least it's not with a stiletto heel (raided from Robby Alomar's White Sox locker).